American basketballer Andrew Robinson has revealed the one thing that baffled him about Australians, and left him wondering whether they were being “passive-aggressive”.
The basketball forward, 28, who is originally from Maryland, moved to Melbourne in 2024 to play for the Bendigo Braves, before signing with the Ballarat Miners.
After living in the country for one year, Robinson revealed in an Instagram video that he had noticed two words that Aussies “never say”, and how it left him confused for “so long”.
“One of the first things that I had to adjust to when I came to Australia was the fact that Australians don’t say ‘you’re welcome’,” began Robinson.
“What I mean by that is not even in a rude way, but in America, if you do something for somebody and then they say ‘thank you’, we’ll say ‘you’re welcome’.
“Australians will be like, ‘Oh, that’s alright’.
“When I first came over here, I was like, what do you mean, ‘that’s alright’? If someone said that in the States, it would be a passive-aggressive response,” Robinson said in a video shared with his 8,000 followers.
Nevertheless, the basketballer said that despite his initial confusion, he has since “come around to the fact” that when Australians say “that’s alright”, it’s the same as saying “you’re welcome”.
Robinson’s statement caught the attention of Aussie viewers, and thousands rushed to the comments section to share their reactions.
“I feel like ‘you’re welcome’ implies we’ve done a service for you and put ourselves out of our way to assist you, whereas ‘no worries’ implies that it hasn’t been a bother for us to help you at all in the first place,” one Aussie said.
“You’re welcome seems intense and could easily be misconstrued as passive-aggressive here,” another echoed.
“‘You’re welcome’ is normally used if someone doesn’t say thank you or is rude in other ways. It’s said sarcastically,” a third explained.
“It’s only ‘you’re welcome’ if they don’t say ‘thank you’,” a fourth person added.
Others turned the tables on Robinson to share their confusion about the American way of saying “you’re welcome”.
“I remember asking an American to pass the salt, I said ‘thanks’, they said ‘you’re welcome’, I’m like calm down you just passed me salt,” one Aussie joked.
“Aussie in Los Angeles here! In LA people don’t say ‘you’re welcome’. They say ‘uh-huh’. It’s the weirdest thing,” another added.
Responding to his comments, Robinson confirmed that he now had a better understanding of the Australian dialect.
“Well, I take it back then…it took me so long to get used to this, but we good now,” he wrote in the caption of his post.